that your entire world had been destroyed, nothing much signified — so you went back to the mines, worked like a dog for six weeks and returned to Mocsin for another two-week furlough. Only this time you didn't piss around trying to find your nonexistent wife and kids, you went straight to the brothels or the bars or the gambling houses. And that was that.
Yet Ryan frowned as he took the buggy down the long street. He was suddenly aware of J.B. breathing heavily almost into his right ear.
'Funny,' J.B. said. Then he said, 'Worrying.'
The gaudy stretch of lights, both sides, that they both remembered from the last visit was distinctly far apart. Most of the places here had run on generators, and as the street was one long procession of bars and gaudy houses, there had been no night here at all during the hours of darkness, only brilliant illumination, false day.
But now most of the bars were dark, boarded up, and what lights there were that shone on the road were flickering candles or hissing kerosene lamps. Ryan judged that maybe one in three bars remained open.
'They running out of booze or something?' said Hunaker, brushing a hand through her hair again. The other hand firmly held one of the M-60 grips. She said with a chuckle, 'Rot-gut shit, anyway. I had the runs forever last time I was in this toilet of a town,' but the chuckle was halfhearted.
'You see Charlie's?' said J.B., craning his neck.
'That's what I'm looking for,' grunted Ryan. Then he said, 'Yeah. Still there.'
Charlie's was on the left, way down. In between it and its nearest lighted neighbor up the street were maybe seven closed and boarded-up bars. The next one down the street was near the end of the block. The two wide windows, on each side of the entrance to Charlie's, were tightly shuttered. Above the closed door was a long panel window, and behind the glass was neon strip lettering spelling out the words Charlie's Bar. The neon was dead. The lettering was lit by five guttering candles, one of which was a mere stub on the point of extinction.
'Hell,' muttered Hunaker. 'What we gonna find in there?'
'You're not going to find anything in there,' said Ryan, pulling over to the sidewalk beside an old rusted post on which was sat something, as he'd discovered some years back somewhere else, that had once been known as a parking meter. A coin in its mouth gave you an hour of parking. Absurd and redundant. 'You're sitting here, looking after the store.'
'Hellfire,' complained Hunaker. 'I never get to have any fun when I'm out with you, Ryan.'
'You keep your eyes skinned,' advised Ryan. 'I have a feeling we might be in for plenty of fun before the night's out.'
'Do I get to kill one of Teague's sec men? Aw, nuke-blast it, Ryan, please tell me I can do that.'
Ryan braked, shifted in his seat. He turned and stared around. There was Hovac, Rintoul — whose boots could be seen but nothing else because he was up in the roof blister — and the three spares: Koll, a tall, bony blonde with an oddly thick mustache; Hennings, a big black with a lacerating sense of humor; and Samantha the Panther, black, too, and a mutant who could see in the dark and had exceptional powers of hearing.
Ryan said, 'Rint and Sam. Henn, you take the roof.'
He checked his mirrors while the crew made their adjustments, then opened the door and stepped out. J.B. followed him, gripping a Steyr AUG 5.56mm as though it were a part of him, an extension of his own right hand. Ryan popped his LAPA inside his coat, thought about taking the panga then decided not. He automatically checked the SIG, holstered it, ran his fingers over his belt pouches, feeling their weight, checking their contents; he knew they were all full but did it, anyway. Better to be one hundred percent sure than one hundred percent dead.
'Okay.'
He slammed the door, O-ed his fingers to Hunaker through the glass. J.B.'s Steyr was now inside the long coat he, too, wore. The bullpups of the other two had similarly vanished from sight.
A couple of blocks up the street two lurched together, went into a complicated dance routine, arms around each other, to stop themselves from falling over. Or that's what it looked like. Maybe, thought Ryan, they just liked each other. Or maybe they felt lonely in this desolate street. A wind had sprang up, whipping at his hair. He could hear the sound of fiddle music, muted, coming from somewhere.
He turned to the door of Charlie's Bar, shoved down on the handle, walked in.
Charlie's Bar was like just about every other bar in the street, just about every other bar in Mocsin, just about every other bar in the whole of the Deathlands. It was a place whose entire reason for existence was booze. It was a place where you went to drink yourself into a stupor, a place where you drank to forget.
The bar itself ran down most of one wall with barrels atop it, strategically placed every three or four meters along, bottles on shelves behind. Tall mirrors hung behind the bar. These aided the lighting by reflecting what was already there. Even so, the long room was murky, a place of dancing shadows, with only three or four lamps and not a hell of lot of candles flickering in the many drafts that struck through uncaulked cracks and crevices in doors and window shutters. It was low ceilinged, drab walled, stale smelling, greasy atmosphered. Smoke hung heavily in the air, a thick miasma that the guttering candles did little to cut through.
Opposite the bar were curtained booths. Small round tables were scattered down the room. The seats were covered in plush that was a century old and looking it. There was chrome everywhere, but it was rusty, tarnished. The booth curtains, threadbare velvet, had once had tassels hanging from them. Early in the reign of Fishmouth Charlie, the current owner, there had been a time when certain captains of Jordan Teague's sec men had taken to wearing fancy epaulettes on the shoulders of their black leather jackets. It was noted by the more sharp- eyed of Mocsin's citizenry that these epaulettes bore a remarkable resemblance to the curtain tassels from Charlie's. Charlie had not made a fuss. Charlie had always had a wise and circumspect nature.
The bar was nearly empty; maybe fifteen or twenty people sitting in the booths or at the center tables, drinking steadily. One or two were eating something that smelled like regular meat stew, and probably was. Charlie had a good rep where food was concerned; you had no worries about suddenly discovering you were gorging yourself on roach mince or putrid hog or prime cut of human when you dined at Charlie's. Many of the drinkers were muties, which, considering the owner, was not surprising.
Ryan went to the bar. He nodded to the woman behind the bar and the woman behind the bar nodded back. Nothing could be gauged from her features. Only her protuberant eyes were at all expressive. From below her eyes, her face bulged out to her mouth, a tiny, thin-lipped orifice like the spout of a volcano. There seemed to be no jawline whatsoever. Although her hair was thick and curly, her eyebrows were nonexistent. She was short, her arms plump, her fingers spatulate. She wore a drab brown-colored shift that had clearly seen better days, yet was clean and well pressed.
Ryan said, 'Miss Charlene.'
A flicker of amusement darted across the woman's eyes.
She said, 'Ryan. Always the gentleman.' The voice that emanated from that tiny mouth was surprisingly deep. She said, 'What d'you fancy?'
Ryan said, 'What else but you?' He put his hands on the bar top and said, 'Okay, Charlie, now we got the civilities out of the way, how about a pitcher of wine?' He glanced around, recognized a few faces he knew — Blue Bennett, Stax with his pointy ears, The Lizard, Hal Prescott, Chewy the Chase, one-time ace wheelman with a bunch of hog-riders out East and now retired since some joker had blown both his legs off, and Ole One-Eye, grizzled veteran of the short-lived but bloody mutie War of '68, which had flared in what had once been Kentucky. Ryan noted that none looked at all pleased to see him. One or two indeed looked positively murderous. 'Then you can explain what's going on, why there were guys spitting at us as we went past, and how come Ole One-Eye there looks like he'd like to pluck out mine to add to his.'
Charlie drew the cork on a liter bottle of red and pushed glasses across the bar.
'No one wants you here, Ryan. No one wants the Trader. You tell him to fuck off outta here, get back the hell where he came from.'
Ryan poured himself a glass of wine, then shoved the bottle toward J.B. 'You say the friendliest things.' He sipped some of the liquid, rolled it around his mouth, savored the nutty taste of it. 'Tell me more.'
'You got weapons, right?'
'Sure. Some.'
'Spike 'em.'
'As bad as that?'
'The men blew two of the mines three days back.'
